Military

One December night in 1942, a Nazi parachutist landed in a Cambridgeshire field. His mission: to sabotage the British war effort....

The thrilling, edge-of-your-seat true story of one soldier's Special Forces operations in the Falklands War....

This is the true story of the most extraordinary deception ever planned by Churchill’s spies: an outrageous lie that travelled from a Whitehall basement all the way to Hitler’s desk....

Billy Billingham grew up tough; a grim future ahead of him offering little respite from the hostile streets he walked....

The incredible story of the crack team of men and women who transformed RAF Bomber Command and helped the Allies deliver decisive victory over Nazi Germany....

Acclaimed military historian Peter Caddick-Adams brings the closing stage of the Allies' fight against Nazi Germany brilliantly to life. He explores the immense challenges they faced in crossing the Rhine on a 300-mile front....

A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's grand masterwork.... 

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Laurence Rees has spent nearly 20 years meeting people who were tested to the extreme during World War II....  

A joint biography that investigates how, during their lifetimes, Philip and Alexander transformed Macedon from a weak kingdom into a globe-spanning empire....

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Command and Control, a ground-breaking account of the management of nuclear weapons from Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation....

Orwell chronicled his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War in Homage to Catalonia....

This explosive book is a story of scandal, betrayal and misuse of intelligence at the highest levels of UK and US governments - which has had direct, horrifying impact on terror attacks in the West and the shape of the Middle East today....

In 'The Colditz Story'....

Letting you into areas of his life he’s never talked about before, in Zero Negativity, Ant will show you how to embrace failure and use it to your advantage....

No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership....

Whether serving in the Special Forces, rowing oceans or investigating some of the world’s most notorious drug cartels, Jason Fox has overcome more than his fair share of emotional and mental conflicts....

A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: The Norman Conquest....

In this groundbreaking investigation, investigative journalist David de Jong reveals how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II—and how the world allowed them to get away with it....

Colditz - the dreaded POW camp was supposed to be impregnable....

The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order. Jessie Childs plunges the listener into the shock of the struggle through one of its most dramatic episodes: the siege of Basing House....

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway....

The Royal Marine Commandos have become a byword for elite raiding skills and cutting-edge military operations. They are globally renowned, yet shrouded in mystery. With unique insight and authority, Commando captures the essence and heart of this revered military unit then and now....

Beginning in the broken aftermath of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, which made German recovery almost impossible....

In the summer of 1941, at the height of the war in the Western Desert, a bored and eccentric young officer, David Stirling, came up with a plan that was imaginative, radical and against the rules....

This is a true story of a great victory against all the odds. Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest, bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times....

Published posthumously in 1919, this collection of diary entries presents a scathing picture of army life and is said to be one of the most vivid accounts of daily life in the trenches. It chronicles West's increasing disillusion with war and his move toward pacifist and atheist beliefs. The final part consists of his powerful war poems, including God, How I Hate You, You Young Cheerful Men, and Night Patrol. West was killed by a sniper in 1917. In view of some of his poems, one wonders if death was not unwelcome.  

March 1945. Allied troops are poised to cross the Rhine and sweep on into Germany. Victory is finally within their grasp. But if they believe this victory can be easily won, they face swift disillusionment. The final 100 days of the Second World War will prove to be bitterly and bloodily fought, village by village, town by town. Acclaimed military historian Peter Caddick-Adams brings this closing stage of the Allies' fight against Nazi Germany brilliantly to life. He explores the immense challenges they faced in crossing the Rhine on a 300-mile front. 

The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order. Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the listener into the shock of the struggle through one of its most dramatic episodes: the siege of Basing House. To the parliamentarian Roundheads, the Hampshire mansion was a bastion of royalism, popery and excess. Its owner was both a Catholic and staunch supporter of Charles I. His motto Love Loyalty was etched into the windows. He refused all terms of surrender.

The Complete Strategy Collection, a compilation of ancient and historical philosophies, will increase your knowledge of strategy, conflict, and adversity throughout the ages, giving you valuable insight into the past while opening a window to the future. Although each of the works can be considered a manual or diagram for war or engaging in physical combat, the life skills embodied in each can be adapted to everyday life in modern society. Listen and learn how you, too, can take advantage of the strategies of war.

On March 20, 1822, the Missouri Republican published a notice addressed “to enterprising young men” in the St. Louis area. “The subscriber,” it said, “wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years. For particulars enquire of Major Andrew Henry…or of the subscriber near St. Louise.” The “subscriber” was General William H. Ashley, and among the “enterprising young men” who embarked with Major Henry less than a month later was 18-year-old James Bridger.

The Battle of Midway was, on paper, an improbable victory for the smaller, less experienced American navy and air force, so much so that it was quickly described as “a miracle.” This new history demonstrates that luck, let alone miracles, had little to do with it. In The Silver Waterfall, Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor show how the efforts of America’s peacetime navy combined with creative innovations made by designers and industrialists were largely responsible for the victory. 

They landed in a dust storm so thick the pilot used dead reckoning and a guess to find the ground. Welcomed by a band of heavily armed militiamen, they climbed a mountain on horseback to meet the most ferocious warlord in Asia. They plotted a war of nineteenth-century maneuvers against a twenty-first-century foe. They trekked through minefields, sometimes past the mangled bodies of local tribesmen who'd shared food with them hours before. The men they helped called them brothers. Hollywood called them the Horse Soldiers. They called themselves Green Berets—Special Forces ODA 595.

In this major new history of the Continental Army's Grand Forage of 1778, award-winning military historian Ricardo A. Herrera uncovers what daily life was like for soldiers during the darkest days of the American Revolution: the Valley Forge winter. Here, the army launched its largest and riskiest operation—not a bloody battle against British forces but a campaign to feed itself and prevent starvation or dispersal during the long encampment. Herrera brings to light the army's herculean efforts to feed itself, support local and Continental governments, and challenge the British Army.

In March 1943, in their first fight with the Germans, American soldiers in North Africa were pushed back 50 miles by Rommel’s Afrika Korps and nearly annihilated. Only the German decision not to pursue them allowed the Americans to maintain a foothold in the area. General Eisenhower, the supreme commander, knew he needed a new leader on the ground, one who could raise the severely damaged morale of his troops. He handed the job to a new man: Lieutenant General George Patton.

In this startling and original work, best-selling author Charles Higham (Howard Hughes: The Secret Life) addresses one of the greatest historical mysteries: Did John Wilkes Booth act alone on the night of Good Friday, 1865, or was he part of a wide conspiracy? Drawing from letters, diaries, previously unstudied records of official hearings, railway timetables, and obscure shipping manifests, Higham weaves a spellbinding account of intrigue. 

Hello, I'm Pamela Nightingale, daughter of the late international best-selling author and radio personality, Earl Nightingale. I'd like to share with you the true-life story of my father and the personal secrets of his life, with behind-the-scenes details of how he discovered the Strangest Secret. In this time of uncertainty and difficulty for many, the time is right to release the inspirational example of how Earl Nightingale lived his life and overcame adversity and limitations to help others do the same. Join me and my cousins on the adventure of a lifetime.

January 1972: the tiny outpost of British Honduras is threatened with imminent invasion by battle-hardened, US-trained Guatemalan paratroopers. Britain's response must be immediate and decisive. But there is only one deterrent the government can offer: HMS Ark Royal, once the navy's most powerful warship, now a white elephant on the verge of being scrapped. To save the small colony, she must launch a pair of Buccaneer fighter bombers on an unprecedented long-range mission. But first the old carrier must make a high-speed 1,500-mile dash across the Atlantic.

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and barbarians, generals and politicians squabbled over dwindling scraps of power, two men—former comrades on the battlefield—rose to prominence on opposite sides of the great game of empire. Roman general Flavius Stilicho, the man behind the Roman throne, dedicated himself to restoring imperial glory, only to find himself struggling for his life against political foes. 

The Emergency Bouzouki Player is the true story of a teenage conscript railroaded into the South African army for two years of national service at the height of the Apartheid War. The cruelty, the absurdity, and the mindlessness of life in the South African army are candidly described in this firsthand account by an unwilling and resentful conscript who, to escape the infamous Diskobolos Infantry Training Camp and its murderous instructors, claimed he could play the bouzouki in a subterfuge that was to have unforeseen, comical, and sometimes life-threatening consequences.